Friday, August 11, 2006

Medical tourism

…”60 Minutes” had a segment a while back on people who go to India or Thailand to get surgery—at a fifth of the cost here.

…Patients are attended by well-trained doctors and registered nurses (the ones we are trying to coax over here to fulfill our nursing shortage).

…One happy patient, who went to Thailand as a last ditch for her lupus, has joined with her husband to form PlanetHospital, a clearinghouse of 20 hospitals in 8 countries.

…She matches patient to hospital and guarantees the experience. (Patients who go it on their own have sometimes had the classic back-alley experience of removing their own stitches in an airport bathroom and lying on a blood-soaked table.)

1 comment:

How Necessary Are Medical Tourism Companies?Does it make more sense to plan my health vacation on my own or to use a medical tourism company to help out with the details. The latter is more expensive but seems a great deal easier.

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I am a long-time freelance health and science reporter, screenwriter, and blogger. My work has appeared in venues from the Costco Connection to Washingtonian and WebMD. I also used to teach creativity at the Smithsonian.